1913-1914 Berliner Strassenszene by E.L. Kirchner2006 SOLD 38 M$ including premium by Christie's

1938 The Fury of the Birds​2017 SOLD for £ 36M including premium

After the First World War, German artists like Max Beckmann, Max Ernst, George Grosz and Otto Dix brought social criticism to the level of a major art far beyond caricature. Of course the Nazi regime does not agree. Beckmann is one of the targets of Hitler's furious attacks on degenerate art.

Beckmann precipitately left Germany in 1937 and settled in Amsterdam. Like Miro at the same time in Spain, he could not manage to stay away from politics. He immediately conceived a great composition, first entitled Der Land des Wahnsinningen (the country of the insane) which would express his horror of the collectivisms.

Completed at the end of the summer of 1938, Hölle der Vögel (hell of birds) is the achievement of that project. This oil on canvas 120 x 160 cm is for sale by Christie's in London on June 27, lot 11. Three days before the press release of May 8, Financial Time announced an estimate of £ 30M.

This scene mixes the medieval and the modern to better express the permanent threat of abject persecution. Tortures are inflicted by hooded birds. In a claustrophobic atmosphere with black lines and garish colors, the victim chained on an Inquisition bed is a light spot. A bird plows his back to the blood with a large knife.

This lugubrious ceremony is presided by a harpy standing out of her broken egg with a monstrous breast. The crowd of secondary characters is made up of screaming nudes who perform the Hitler Grüss, removing any possible doubt about the interpretation of this allegory in the modern world.

The narrative abundance in that work is inspired by medieval imagery. The choice of the bird as a symbol of blind fury reminds the man-swallowing bird in Bosch's Hell.

The political violence in Hölle der Vögel may be compared to Picasso's Guernica, also conceived in 1937. Beckmann's painting, cautiously preserved in a private apartment in Paris until the end of the Second World War, would have deserved a similar notoriety.

Please watch both videos shared by Christie's, one of thempositioning the artwork within Beckmann's career and the other one in which the auction house chose to accompany it by the reading of a similarly inspired poem by W. H. Auden.

1954 The Open-Wheeled Champion2013 SOLD 19.6 M£ including premium

Everything goes very fast, in any meaning of the word, for Mercedes-Benz at the beginning of 1954. Technology is the best asset to win competitions. For coming back to racing, the German brand aligns the 300SL model for endurance and the W196 single-seater model for Formula 1.

They must win. Mercedes managed to take the best driver, Juan Manuel Fangio, world champion in 1951 with Alfa Romeo, who had just won the first two grand prix of the season on a Maserati.

For their first collaboration, Mercedes and Fangio win the Reims grand prix on a W196 with enclosed wheels. Surrounding the wheel by a piece of bodywork is a theoretical advantage because it limits the impact of air friction. The top speed exceeds 200 km / h.

At that time, the skill of the pilot is prevailing on theories. The next grand prix, at Silverstone, is sinuous. Powerless against Ferrari, Fangio requires the withdrawal of the enclosing to improve his freedom of action. This is the right decision.

Thus are born the chassis 005 and 006 of the W196. With the open wheeled 006, Fangio wins the next two grand prix, in Germany at the Nürburgring and in Switzerland at Bremgarten.

The 006 has no rival for the title of most prestigious single-seater car of all time, formerly driven by the most skilful driver of all time. It is for sale on July 12by Bonhamsat Goodwood.

POST SALE COMMENT

006 is not far from being the most prestigious car of all time in all categories. Its result at auction is the highest of all time: £ 19.6 million including premium.An open wheeled W196 (perhaps the 006) is driven by Fangio himself during a demonstration at the Nürburgring in 1986. The image below is licensed under Creative Commons with attribution By Lothar Spurzem [CC-BY-SA-2.0-de (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/de/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons.

1963 Fight for a New Art​2016 SOLD for $ 25.6M including premium

During the war Gerhard Richter is a Dresden boy. He admires the feats of the soldiers. One of them brings him back to reason : he just deserves a spanking.

Years pass. Germany is a major challenge of the Cold War. Richter leaves to the west in 1961, two months before the build of the Berlin Wall. With his friends in the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf he wants a new art that expresses their time with no legacy from the pictorial styles of the past. These students conceive the Capitalist Realism. What a program !

Richter believes that truth lays in photography because a photo catches a moment. The message is stronger if the image is poor. When copying these banalities in oil on large canvases, he maintains the grisaille or the poor color of the original view. He blurs the lines during the completion phase of his artwork in order that no detail shall disturb the overall effect.

He executes two paintings on the theme of military aviation in 1963. Bomber shows a US squadron dropping bombs during the Second World War. Düsenjäger, meaning jet fighter, displays the first military aircraft authorized in the Federal Republic with NATO support.

Düsenjäger is huge. The jet is in flight over any horizon. The blur gives an illusion of speed and the colors are ugly. The original photo was poor. The front of the aircraft is already out of the frame : it was going too fast.

The artist has often commented about his art. He does not want to be a politician or an anti-militarist. The juxtaposition of Bomber and Düsenjäger provides nevertheless a strong message. Düsenjäger is certainly necessary for the military balance. This terrifying machine demonstrates however that no political progress was made after the Second World War : in 1963 everybody waits for the international conflict that will follow the Cold War. Bomber and Düsenjäger are the Guernica of Gerhard Richter.

Düsenjäger, oil on canvas 130 x 200 cm, was sold for $ 11.2 million including premium by Christie's on 13 November 2007. It is estimated $ 25M for sale by Phillips in New York on November 16, lot 7.

1967 The Psychedelic Jungle of Sigmar Polke2015 SOLD for $ 27M including premium

On June 29, 2011, Sotheby's sold for £ 5.75M including premium Dschungel (Jungle), a dotted painting on canvas 160 x 245 cm executed in 1967 by Sigmar Polke.

At that time Polke was a young photographer and painter who had not yet completed his art studies. Along with his elder fellow Gerhard Richter, another East German passed to the West, he considered the anti-Art of creating large size images from trivial pictures.

They were influenced by the pop art of Lichtenstein and Warhol with an additional feeling typical of Germany at that time, questioning the contradiction between leisure and war for the use of our planet.

In the same 2011 sale, Stadtbild II painted in 1968 by Polke was sold for £ 4.6M including premium. The theme looks opposite to Jungle, the city against the tropical scenery, but the contrasts of colors are similarly striking and both artworks question the society by imitating the travel posters.

I described Dschungel as follows before the 2011 sale :

The unidentified tropical landscape in backlighting is dominated by a huge sun rising or setting over the sea with a spectacular halo. The painting, including dark leaves in the foreground, is entirely built with small dots of color, as if it were an advertisement poster.

Gerhard Richter is the true rebel of art. Some artists before him including Rauschenberg had introduced disgust as a variant of artistic impression. Richter goes much further. He debases the art to reveal its profound nature.

In 1962, he considers that a bad photo does not lie because it is too ugly to deserve retouching. It expresses real life, the reality of a fleeting moment which had probably been important for its author.

The anti-art by Richter consists to disproportionately enlarge black and white photos, blurry and often without any interest but in a great variety, by using a hyperrealistic technique already perfectly controlled.

One of his earliest works is the image of an airplane in flight, magnified as an oil on canvas up to 130 x 200 cm. Made in 1963, it was sold for $ 11.2 million including premium by Christie's on November 13, 2007.

The strength of the anti-artistic message of Richter is so great and so new that he finds customers. Domplatz Mailand, an oil on canvas 275 x 290 cm painted in 1968, was commissioned by the Milanese offices of Siemens.

The image is a masterpiece of ugliness with a particularly unpleasant blur. The original photo was lost, thankfully! This photo by an unidentified tourist may be repeated by anyone, without blurring motion, with a more relevant composition than truncating both the cathedral on the right and the buildings on the left.

With this quality and its very large size, Mailand Domplatz is the culmination of the first period of Richter. On the following year, he managed to radically shake the established tradition of landscape painting.

Domplatz Mailand is estimated $ 30M, for sale by Sotheby's in New York on May 14. It is illustrated in a very interesting blog post shared by the auction house.I invite you to watch the video shared by Sotheby's.POST SALE COMMENTThis large painting is a technical feat of the first style of Richter, playing altogether on the easy identification of the subject and on the difficulty of reading it. It was sold $ 37M including premium.

1986 The Chromatic Chaos of Gerhard Richter2015 SOLD for £ 30.4M including premium

In the early 1980s, Gerhard Richter begins to find his own abstract style. He gradually escapes evocation and stops from 1986 giving titles to his major works. He also wants to stand out from abstract expressionism in favor of a chaos of colors for which it will however be necessary to provide an overall logic.

599 is an experimental work. Chaos is here replaced by a double movement of forces, horizontal and vertical. This is one of his earliest uses of the rake which is still challenged by the brush. Many remorses indicate all the care paid to the realization of this painting in a large size that brings to it the role of a demonstrator.

The artist offers 599 with a full chromatic scale structured in blocks with visible border lines between the colored areas. The clear parts display an opulent shine rarely attempted in painting and evoking Klimt.

The overall impression is a movement of vertical blaze that joins the volcanic explosions by Matta.

599 is a masterpiece by Richter in the etymological meaning of the word, as it is an artwork that opens a new process which will be prolific and will maintain abstract painting among the major arts of contemporary era.

​1986 The Quiet Abstraction of Gerhard Richter​2016 SOLD for $ 34M including premium

Gerhard Richter conscientiously serializes his Abstraktes Bild (AB) in chronological order, in series ranging from one to ten paintings. A review of the 1986 millésime, AB 588 to AB 619, tracks the evolution of the technique and inspiration of the artist in this very important transition year which includes the first use of the squeegee.

At the beginning of 1986, Richter already goes further than other abstract artists by an extensive use of the range of colors and a great brightness. The first AB's of 1986 are often inspired by landscape views in which we try to recognize waterfalls of various shapes. Lines are separating the various areas in the image.

AB 599, 300 x 250 cm, was sold for £ 30,4M including premium by Sotheby's on February 10, 2015. The gigantic culmination of this phase is the two Claudius, AB 603 and AB 604, 311 x 406 cm each. Offered by Christie's on October 19, 2008 at the start of the crisis of the art market, AB 604 was not sold.

AB 612-4, 225 x 200 cm, titled Still, is estimated $ 20M for sale by Sotheby's in New York on November 17, lot 13.

To execute Still, the artist used jointly brushes and squeegees. The contribution of the squeegee adds a smooth veil over the impasto. The dividing lines are now disappearing.

The title is interesting. Still is of course not a movie picture. The website gerhardrichter.com provides the official English translation : Quiet. AB 615 and AB 616 are named Courbet. Nothing prevents AB 612-4 to be a tribute to another master : Clyfford Still. The large red area on the left in AB 612-4 may be an echo to Still's hells. The intermingling colors that open the new signature style of Richter remind the shredded separations between Clyfford Still's colors.

1988 Around the Blue2014 SOLD 28.7 M$ including premium

In 1988, Gerhard Richter desires to control all the artistic potential of pure abstraction. His method is to rework tirelessly the layers of paint until the achievement pleases him. By such a subconscious creation, he is a follower of Pollock. Emotion and hand make art.

He adds two key features: the staging of all colors of the spectrum and the very large size. His progressive and patient technique also enables an exceptional vibration of the color dots.

On May 14 in New York, Sotheby's sells a monumental oil on canvas, 3 x 3 m. This opus 658 is entitled Blau. Blue is predominant only in a small area in the bottom right but its dynamism overrules the artwork. Blau is estimated $ 25M.

Two years later with his squeegee, Richter explores the creation of an illusion of reality, abolishing the differentiation between figuration and abstraction. as De Kooning had done.

1990 The Decade of the Squeegee2014 SOLD 29 M$ including premium

Abstraktes Bild 712 by Gerhard Richter was sold for $ 17.5 million including premium by Sotheby's on November 13, 2012. This painting is estimated $ 22M, for sale by Christie's in New York on May 13, lot 15 of the catalog.

Abstraktes Bild 712 is the first work done by Gerhard Richter in 1990. He had started this series two years before, and he his now mastering his use of a wide rake to apply colors.

This squeegee used by Richter to bring the liquid paint on the canvas is a hard tool that disrupts the previous layers of paint when they become almost dry. The process is repeated until the color balance of the work meets the wish of the artist.

To begin that new decade, Richter prepares a masterpiece. This oil on canvas, 260 x 200 cm, is one of the largest. Also the nicely mingling red, yellow and blue are enhanced by a final layer of silver gray which provides a brightening effect onto the whole.

The choice of these three basic colors enables to reach almost the entire spectrum. This is an indirect tribute to the fascination with pure colors that had been expressed by Barnett Newman.

The work is completely abstract, but the uneven distribution of color densities may generate the illusion of a blister, as if this area was part of a living being. It is well known that an Abstraktes Bild by Richter has no figurative meaning. By the effect it can provide to the viewer, 712 is probably one of the closest to Rothko.

1994 The Sublime Cacophony of Gerhard Richter2012 SOLD 21.3 M£ including premium

Nothing can stop the enthusiasm of collectors for large Abstraktes Bild paintings by GerhardRichter, to the point that the artist himself has indicated his lack of understanding of this phenomenon. Let there be no mistake: his work is both abundant and of exceptional quality. Before him, Alberto Giacometti also protected his creativity by similar statements.

On October 12 in London, Sotheby's sells Abstraktes Bild 809-4, estimated £ 9M. This oil on canvas 225 x 200 cm was painted in 1994 in the period of greater maturity in the abstract art of Richter, when his technique of squeegee is fully developed. Here is the link to the catalog.

With always different and often subtle colors, the horizontal movement of the rake comes in opposition with large vertical streaks. However, the shock of colors is not actually geometric or cleverly dispositioned or allusive of forms. Richter renewed the abstract art without imitating Rothko, or Zao Wou-ki, or Still, and Pollock not either.

Richter's magic is to provide an impression of spontaneity in paintings extensively worked until reaching the emotion intended by the artist. The wording tried in the catalog of "exuberant cacophony" is not enough. For the balance of colors and shapes, I prefer saying that Richter has the absolute eye.

All of that is exciting the contemporary observers. The abstract world of Richter is the chaos of current time. Musicians like Richter as they like Basquiat. 809-4 is brought to auction by Eric Clapton.I invite you to play the video shared by Sotheby's.

POST SALE COMMENT

This superb Abstraktes Bild deserved an exceptional result. It is done: £ 21.3 million including premium.